Firespeaking

This is the masonry heater that we built in the central community building of the Rio Azul community outside of El Bolson, Patagonia, Argentina in March of 2010.  This heater can act as an open fireplace to provide the magic of fire and cut the chill in the late Spring or early Fall… but it really shines through the cold months when you close the first damper and send all the hot gases through a full round-trip in the day bed before they leave through the chimney.  When the fire has gone out, you close the second damper to keep all the accumulated heat in the stone and adobe inside the building which emanates until the next fire you make the following day.  There are pipes in the firebox that heat water in a hot water tank which is above the heater.

Most of the heater was built in our Naturally Building for Fire workshop that I led and then Eva and I did the finishing work afterward.  Here you can see a little more of the context in which the heater was built.  You can see the community kitchen in the background.  The heater helps to form the living room / hang-out area.  There is a sleeping loft in between.  The building currently acts as a barn as well which is why garlic and herbs are hanging and bins of seeds are all around.

This heater also represents a breakthrough for us is making our own hardware.  My old metalsmithing teacher let me build the firebox door, dampers and cleanouts in his shop.

More about masonry heaters….

I look forward to sharing more about the process on my personal blog so stay tuned….

In May of 2009, I traveled back to the island of Bali, in the Indonesian archipelago, where I spent much time as a young boy.  The island, its people and its culture continually inspire me… the degree to which they are immersed in and work together with their natural environment, their exuberantly-expressed spirituality and their tacit commitment to craft as a way of life.  During my time there, I built this wood-fired cookstove in which I combined the local architectural elements of the wood-fired cook stove in traditional (black!) kitchens with what I have learned about sealing the smoke into a pathway and combustion efficiency.

More photos and description of the research and construction process for this stove….

During my stint as a staff member at the Cob Cottage Company, I was responsible for building three Rumford fireplaces.  Within open fireplace design, the Rumford fireplace offers the greatest efficiency in terms of  how much heat actually radiates into the room.  The Rumford design is characterized by a shallow firebox and a tall and open fire back which throws the heat into the room rather than straight up the chimney.

The Ridge House Rumford:

The new dining room Rumford (not yet plastered):

The Rumford in the Castle:

This is an open fire place that turns into an efficient mass stove when the doors are closed and the flu direction changed.  The backside of the fireplace is actually an oven when viewed from the kitchen.  Hot water pipes run through the firebox and feed a hot water tank on the second floor which works in parallel with a solar heating system.  And the whole structure is part of a staircase…. the wooden part of which has yet to be built and will serve as a big box for storing wood under too.  Claudio Rivero drew up the plans and I built it during the month of April.

Construction shots:

A Rumford fireplace is a shallow, efficient design that maximizes the heat radiated to the space by a fire in an open fireplace. A Rumford fireplace doesn’t heat a space nearly as well as a masonry heater but is a very charming addition to any room.  This Rumford fireplace is built with a combination of brick and cob and exits out the wall through an 8″ pipe with damper.  The scultping qualities of cob give a basic fireplace like this endless posibilities of form.